A Progressive Worker's Perspective on the
political and cultural events of our time.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

George Bush repeatedly used the term "hopefull society" to describe our nation in the most optimistic terms. It is all too evident that he is totally out of touch with reality. I have met no-one in the past few years, including "conservatives" who feel optimism. This has been the warmest year on record for the fourth year running and we are facing disasterous environmental changes that "weaning ourselves 70% off of oil by 2025" will not affect. Our economy is a house of cards based on debt. Jobs continue to be our main export and our wages buy less than ever. The gulf coast remains in a state of utter ruin. We are bogged down in a bloody and un-neccessary occupation in Iraq based on lies, as we witness the formation of a Machevellian dictatorship at home with stacked courts and an embedded press. We are 38th in healthcare world-wide and slipping. Our prison population is the largest in the world. We have torture gulags around the globe and can be arrested and disappeared without charges. We are living in a country that would have George Orwell sputtering -- our phones tapped, our meeting infiltrated, no privacy or right to privacy that ideologically stacked courts will recognize.

One of the major themes of Bushes well read arrogant diatribe (between smirks)was that our export of U.S. style Freedoms and Democracy will make the world a safer place. Don't you feel safer already? Iraqis certainly don't and as Cindy Sheehan points out in counting the loss of our freedoms, Bush's definition of Freedom (demonocracy?), like Janis Joplin's may be "nothin' left to lose.